


This is Not the Rope Job: Three Reasons Why Hardison Doesn't Do Bondage

by jenna_thorn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-07
Updated: 2009-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:52:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn





	This is Not the Rope Job: Three Reasons Why Hardison Doesn't Do Bondage

_because they do get tied up, but not for fun_

Sophie'd gone off with Nate to watch the feds descend from a safe distance, or so he hoped. He pulled up his back door into the traffic cameras to spot them in the crowd. Yep, there was Sophie, '50's movie star sunglasses and all, tapping her stylus randomly on the Blackberry that probably wasn't even turned on while Nate pretended to read the newspaper at another table and twitched every time a siren sounded.

Eliot came out of the hall to the bedroom, rubbing his hair with a towel and wearing nothing but Alec's Marvin the Martian boxers.   
"Dude."  
"Don't dude me." Eliot sounded remarkably calm. "I wasn't putting my clothes back on."  
"Okay, yeah, that's a given. Do you know you're still bleeding? Don't sit on anything."  
Eliot lifted his arms to check. "Where?"  
Alec reached out to touch the wound, then pulled his hand away. "Upper back, under your left shoulder, man." He didn't laugh when Eliot tried to chase his own tail. It wasn't funny to watch him.   
"Hunh, road rash. Pretty sure I got the gravel out. Bleeding a lot?"  
"No, just kind of oozing …. I am not having this conversation."  
"What's wrong with you?"  
"Look at you. I feel like I should be putting aloe vera on you or something. Look at your wrists."  
Eliot looked at them, then at Alec. "Aloe vera is for burns, doofus."  
"Rope burns count."  
"Pretty sure they don't. Hardison, this is no big deal."   
"You were tied up with rope in the middle of a warehouse and beaten, then dragged through the parking lot."  
"Yeah, and?"  
"As a diversion."  
"It worked."  
"You are insane, you know that? You are a fucking crazy man, standing in my living room, wearing my cartoon underwear, with your rope burns and your black eye."  
"Yeah, well, I'm about to be the crazy man standing in your living room in your cartoon boxers drinking your beer."  
"I don't have any beer."  
"I brought some over last time."  
"Seriously?"  
"You don't actually use your kitchen cabinets, do you?"  
"I use the pantry."  
"You've got the router in the pantry."  
"Still counts as being used."  
Eliot walked away and Hardison faced his monitor but he wasn't seeing the grid of cameras on it anymore, just the front of the truck as it pulled short of hitting the van they'd blocked the exit with, replaying the way Eliot had used the rope that tied him to the bumper of the truck to strangle one of them, how he'd crawled over one guy to kick the other so hard his head snapped back and he dropped like a rag doll, how Nate had stood with a gun trained on Wollentsky while Eliot had broken the last thug's nose with his own knee, then rolled to his feet and pushed his bound wrists at Sophie for her to cut them apart.

Alec flipped tabs and closed down WebMD. It wasn't like he was going to use any of that anyway and some of the pictures were going to show up in his nightmares. Eliot leaned on the counter, the towel over his shoulders like a cape, and took a pull from his beer.  
"You sure you need to be drinking?" Alec asked.  
"Yeah."  
"I mean, after today, with the –"  
"Hardison, today is why I really want a beer."  
"I think I've got Gatorade or something. Waitaminute," Alec said. "You brought beer over, but have to borrow my clothes?"  
"You host movie nights and I don't take a shower after Bogart."  
"Hell, I do," but at Eliot's look, Alec added hastily, "The ones with Bacall, man."   
Eliot tipped the beer at him in solidarity. "Gotta love the way she whistles."  
"Amen, brother."

_because Parker beat him to it_

Alec let the refrigerator door close and thought he heard something. Mice, in older buildings, chewed through wires, so he was eyeing the acoustic tiles with a cautious eye when one of them disappeared up into the ceiling and Eliot, wrapped like a fly in a spider's cocoon, dropped out, coming to a sharp stop in mid air, eye to eye with Alec. These people did the strangest things with their down time. Alec blinked. "You're upside down."   
"I'm gonna punch Parker," Eliot growled.  
"Is this some … thing?"  
Eliot narrowed his eyes. His face was flushed, but he wasn't actually struggling. "Like what?"  
"I'm thinking of the photo set and the whole Miss America thing."  
Eliot was silent. Alec wondered if he was supposed to be helping him or not. The man probably knew four ways to get down without help and was going to do something ninja-like any second. Best he just stand out of the way then. He popped the top on his soda and moved to lean against the sink.   
Eliot frowned with just his eyebrows, still upside down. "Vanessa Williams? That was twenty years ago."  
"But memorable. I was at an impressionable age."  
Eliot nodded, gravely. Well, it should have been gravely, but his ponytail swung as he did. "Hardison?"  
"Yeah?"  
"This is nylon rope, I'm fully clothed, upside down, and there's a minor matter of my dick. I'm pretty sure she doesn't have one of those. In any of those photos."  
"True, very true." Alec nodded and sipped his soda, still flicking through the photoshoot in his memory.  
"Hardison. If you move the table so I can get down without having to dislocate anything, I will buy you leather restraints."   
Alec reached down to adjust himself automatically before he started pulling on the table. Twenty years ago he'd been young enough for those photos to have sunk in deep. "All you had to do was ask, man. I thought you were going to do it yourself."  
Eliot jackknifed up, did something Alec couldn't see, then dropped to the table and the floor without slowing down. That figured, after making him move it and all. "Could have." He shrugged the rope off his shoulders, unwrapping it more carefully from the silver bands on his wrist and pulled the elastic in his hair out, shaking his hair loose. "But then I wouldn't have an excuse to put you in leather cuffs." He held a contraption of black painted steel and matte chrome in one hand and looped the rope around his other arm.   
"Hey, whoa, me? What about Parker?"  
"Not using the leather on her." Eliot grabbed the rope and left the kitchen with a gleam in his eye.   
Alec slammed the rest of his soda and tossed the bottle into the blue bin in the corner. Sophie better get back from her Europe recon soon or they were going to have to find those two a hobby.

Maybe he should volunteer.

_because none of them liked being tied down_

He wasn't sure how all of this had happened. He'd been there, even, well, for most of it, but that didn't mean he understood it. The beginning was simple, the warehouse when Nate strolled in calmer than he should have been, but then it got complicated, when Sophie said 'family' like it meant them. Then there was the night Nate dozed off, because no one was allowed to say 'passed out', on his couch and Eliot crowded him up against the pool table and Alec's heart rate had shot up in alarm, then stayed up when he wasn't afraid any more, just confused and hard as a rock, watching the top of Eliot's head go forward and back until he had to close his eyes or fall down and Nate would wake up at that, surely, even if the wet sound of Eliot sliding wasn't loud enough, even if his own choked off whine could be ignored. And if that was complicated, then how could he possibly understand how Parker showed up the first time and Eliot hadn't twitched, hadn't shown any surprise at all, just wrapped her up in his arms and pulled her in next to Hardison, all of them in the center of his California King. That first time, she hadn't even gotten naked, just rubbed them off against one another. Her small hands were cold against his dick but Eliot, he was fever hot. She laughed when they came, and she slipped out like a ghost with a ponytail. The next time she'd gotten into it a bit more, but she didn't stay the night; most of the time, neither did Eliot, and Alec didn't push. He was the normal one, he knew that, Nate notwithstanding, and he wasn't exactly picket fence material. Then Sophie'd pulled her shit with that damn statue, and he was pissed off, yeah, but Eliot had been furious and they'd all walked away and no one had looked back. Or at least he didn't see anyone when he did.

But he couldn't stay away. None of them could and so he sat in the van, eavesdropping on Nate talking to Sterling and Parker sat with her back on the van floor and her feet up against the driver's seat and Sophie sitting on the passenger side ignoring Eliot so hard it felt like the van was filling up with salt water, hot salt water, or something thicker, maybe blood and he rubbed his throat and said, "That reminds me, man. What the Hell?"  
Eliot shrugged.  
"That is not an answer." Alec couldn't spin but he could scootch sideways and twist, though that just gave him a view of Sophie, watching the streetlight up the street cycle in front of them and Parker carefully staring upward.  
"What? I pulled the blow."  
"Yeah, well thank you very much for not killing me when we both know you could, but ow, man. I need my head attached to my neck."  
Eliot glanced up at him. "You want me to kiss it and make it better?"  
Alec didn't stop to think. "Maybe." That got him a sharp look, a surprised look. Good, 'cause he was a little surprised himself. He could see Parker smile.


End file.
